A Whole Empire Walking

Refugees in Russia during World War I

Peter Gatrell

Publication Year: 2005

"... a signal contribution to a growing literature on a phenomenon
that has become tragically pervasive in the 20th century.... This highly original
account combines exemplary empirical research with the judicious application of
diverse methods to explore the far-reaching ramifications of 'a whole empire
walking.'" -- Vucinich Prize citation

"An important
contribution not only to modern Russian history but also to an ongoing repositioning
of Russia in broader European and world historical processes.... elegantly
written... highly innovative." -- Europe-Asia Studies

Drawing on previously unused archival material in Russia, Latvia,
and Armenia and on insights from social and critical theory, Peter Gatrell considers
the origins of displacement and its political implications and provides a close
analysis of humanitarian initiatives and the relationships between refugees and the
communities in which they settled.

Cover

Contents

Acknowledgments

The story of how this book came to be written is one of friendship, scholarly
cooperation, and generous institutional support. John Breuilly, Bob Davies, Yoram
Gorlizki, Edmund Herzig, John Klier, Billie Melman, Boris Mironov, Hilary Pilkington,
Alfred Rieber, Teodor Shanin, Charles Timberlake, and David Turton all
offered encouragement and advice at an early stage of the project. ...

Introduction: Humanity Uprooted

Most informed observers expected the war that began in Europe in July 1914 to be
over in a matter of weeks. The prevailing expectation of a short war was closely tied
to conceptions of a war of movement, of brief and decisive military maneuvers that
would bring one army to a speedy victory over another. ...

1.War and the Origins of Involuntary Displacement

Events on Russia’s western front gave rise to acute anxieties almost immediately, as
it became clear early in the war that Russia had been forced to yield territory to the
enemy.1 Defeat on the battlefield did not spare civilians, who were confronted with
a stark choice: whether to remain behind under enemy occupation or to flee eastward. ...

2.The Politics of Refugeedom

The events of summer 1915 demonstrated to critics of the old regime that Russia’s
rulers exercised no control over the Russian high command. The truth of the matter
was that the government tried and failed to curb the arbitrary behavior of the
generals. At private meetings and in the corridors of power, furious exchanges bore
witness to the fraught relationship ...

3.Resettlement and Relief of Refugees

By the autumn of 1915, the magnitude of the refugee movement could be neither
doubted nor disguised. In Petrograd, the center of the country’s political life, the
public had become accustomed to the presence of countless refugees. Government
ministers, officials, and public activists had begun to consider the likely consequences
of refugeedom ...

4.Consolidating Refugeedom

The tsarist government and the public organizations competed for the right to assume
overall administrative responsibility for the fate of refugees, a struggle in
which the bureaucratic forces emerged victorious by virtue of their tight grip on
financial resources. Yet, as we have seen, the familiar state–society antagonism does
not do full justice to the realities of refugee relief. ...

5.Refugees and Gender

The constitution of refugeedom entailed several implications for notions of gender
in late imperial Russia. Although the fact attracted scarcely any comment, relatively
few refugees were able-bodied men, many of whom had already been conscripted
into the Russian army.1 By implication, patriarchal forms of authority were called
into question ...

6.Refugees and the Labor Market

None of Russia’s refugee population were “immortal” in the sense in which John
Berger characterizes the status of migrant workers in western Europe. Refugees
were not “continually interchangeable,” and they certainly aged, fell sick, and (in
some cases) died before they were able to go “home.” ...

7.Refugees and the Construction of “National” Identity

The enforced resettlement of population during the First World War from areas
threatened by the enemy was termed a “national migration” by eyewitness accounts.
Slavic peoples—Ukrainians, Poles, and Belorussians, as well as “Great Russians”—
made up the majority, but a substantial proportion of the refugee population
were Jews, Latvians, Lithuanians, and Armenians, ...

8.Revolution and Refugeedom

The marginal position occupied by refugees made them invisible guests at the festival
of the Russian revolution. Class affiliation came increasingly to dominate political
loyalties and social behavior, leaving refugees ever more in limbo. Refugees
lacked any defined corporate representation. They thus did not occupy center stage
during the tumultuous events of 1917. ...

Conclusion: The Meanings of Refugeedom

In this book I have been concerned with a social group that appeared in the public
arena virtually overnight. Refugees in wartime Russia posed a clear challenge to
social convention. They tested the validity of the officially sanctioned categories of
soslovie, whereby each individual was ascribed to a specific estate. ...

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